I currently have a Dell XPS 600 from 2005 - a high spec machine for the time but obviously past it now - especially in terms of size and noise. Apparently it's an SLI PC, which means it's noisier than the modern ones.

I'm based in the UK and my realistic budget is about Â£500/600 ($800-900)

If you decide to move away from your Dell you can easily build a machine to your specs and budget that is much quieter than any notebook I've heard. Forget water cooling. Air cooling can be quiet enough to be effectively silent from a few feet away in most ambiant noise environments.

I built my first rig five years ago with SPCR recommended lists, articles and forum threads as my main source of guidance. The case is very important. My first rig used an Antec BQE3700SLK but now I run an Antec Solo. Make good choices in the areas of fans and cpu cooler. Also, pick a cpu that is efficient and easy to cool. Both of the machines I've built for my own use have been budget rigs with AMD processors.

If you take your time and do plenty of research on this site you'll find building your own to be a rewarding experience.

For good information re OS and driver installation and configuration check out the free Tweaking Companion PDF files on the Tweak Guides web site.

If anyone could check out the link and recommend any of the available upgrades for the system, then that'd be great - for example, is it worth upgrading the motherboard? Which graphics card...ATI HD4650 1GB or nVidia 9500 GT 1GB? Fans? PSU?

I'd consider bumping to a better power supply. I've had crap luck with no-name supplies. The antec supply listed is pretty nice, but I have bought about 20 corsair supplies between work and not work, and prefer them.

I have no experience with the gigabyte cases. Antec cases get a thumbs up from me, especially the Antec P183. It's quite spendy though. I've built with the antec 300 before, it's decent. Otherwise, the Antec Solo is my go-to case for work and personal use.

As for the fans that come with the antec cases, the antec tri-cools aren't bad, but not great. From what you wrote in your first post though, I think you will find them to be tremendously better than your dell, so.

If anyone could check out the link and recommend any of the available upgrades for the system, then that'd be great - for example, is it worth upgrading the motherboard? Which graphics card...ATI HD4650 1GB or nVidia 9500 GT 1GB? Fans? PSU?

Thanks.

It won't be very quiet with standard heatsink and fans. At least take the upgrade of the Arctic Cooling CPU cooler for another Â£25. I would also go for the "quiet Fans" they list, the Antec 300 case and the Asus M4A89 GTD-Pro as well - I've got that same board and it has a very good fan speed controller. Altogether it's another Â£100 quid or so but worth it in my opinion.

Have you checked the temperatures in the system as it is now? I'll bet that you could replace the noisy fans with quiet(er) units, and still be plenty cool. Those ducts are pretty well designed, and I think Dell was using loud fans to cover themselves...

OK, I opened up the computer and disconnected the fans one by ones after listening to the noise output from each of them. Naturally, after disconnecting them all (all 5: 2 cpu fans, 1 graphics card fan, +2 other fans - one placed on the side blowing in the direction of the MOBO and one at the front of the whole system), the system certainly sounded quieter but still not as much as I'd hoped. So, the majority of the noise is coming from the PSU and its fan? I wasn't able to look at this part of the system as the computer case didn't allow access to that part of the system.

The Power supply looks to be a custom size that would not be replaceable or modifyable. The two small fans could definatly be noisy. It looks like you will have a hard time silencing the PSU if that is your main ssource of noise. I cannot tell for sure, but the dell motherboard looks to be a standard ATX size. You might be able to buy a replacemnt case to put the dell componets in untill you get the money to upgrade the system. You might need a new cpu cooler as well.

You might be able to buy a replacemnt case to put the dell componets in untill you get the money to upgrade the system.

This sounds like a pretty good short-term solution. You *may* need to buy a new motherboard as well - Dell's often have proprietary form factors and power connector pin arrangements (though you can purchase adapters for the power cables).

We have a PowerEdge SC1420 at the office which looks to be based on the same case design as the XPS 600. It's in use right now so I can't crack it open and look, but based on some pictures I've found online, it looks like it doesn't follow the ATX standard for mounting the motherboard. Not sure about the PSU but as was mentioned, Dell does many times use non-standard power connectors. So you might be out of luck with trying to swap parts at all without some major hacking.

You know though, it looks like there's a good bit of space at the top of the case. I wonder if a normal ATX PSU would fit up there? It would require cutting up the back to make room for the power plug at the very least and probably removing the top rear fan and cutting up the duct a little. Maybe I'll check on our server and see for myself.

Looks like you got yourself an aging box there. Not terribly slow, but if I were to guess off the top of my head, I reckon you could match, and probably beat that system with $500-600 if you were to build a new computer. Just a guesstimate, so YMMV

That stuff should work in any LGA775 motherboard. I'd give it a shot. The Gigabyte G41 mATX is inexpensive and reliable. Read through some SPCR case and power supply reviews to see what's quiet and what appeals to your aesthetic tastes.

Hi, following on from Jay_Sâ€™s suggestion you could buy Case, PSU, heatsink and motherboard.
I think quietening the Dell maybe tricky as they don't use standard fan headers and also have speed monitoring etc and if doesn't see the speeds it expects it may complain or even not boot!

For example an Antec Solo, Enermax Eco 80 350w PSU and G41 motherboard and new CPU cooler is ~Â£200. You have 4 DIMMs currently (judging by pics) you need a board with 4 socket, the cheapest tend to have only 2, e.g. Asus P5G41C-M LX has 4 dimm sockets.
This sounds like (and I guess is) a lot of money for effectively no performance boost, but it will be hugely quieter.

On the up side you would then have a good quiet case and PSU (and maybe CPU cooler) to use in the future. Also pretty much any motherboard you buy could be upgraded to a Q9xxx quad core CPU that would be much more powerful than your current Pentium 4, and cooler! This would buy you some more time with good performance till you need to go for full upgrade with new motherboard / CPU and probably RAM.

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